On August 10th, 2015, Lin’s mother, Rita
Langworthy was gunned down while
watching eight unrelated children. A
lone gunman approached the home and
opened fire. It was a senseless crime and
the community lost one of its most loved
educators. Rita was a retired principal
in Flint, Michigan. In her retirement, she
still made it her mission to tutor and help
underprivileged kids, believing every child
deserves a chance, even paying out of
her own pocket to put those she could into
private school.
The loss of her mother was a huge blow
to Lin. She was not a stranger to loss or
hard times, but this was a true test of her
will. The thought that her mother was gone
was unimaginable, the crime unsolved,
senseless, and brutal was tormenting, but
being her mother’s daughter, Lin did not
succumb to letting tragedy take her down.
Instead, she poured herself into bringing her
mother’s dream alive.
A matter of weeks after her death, Lin
created The Rita Langworthy Foundation
(RLF), a nonprofit in memory of her mother
that provided funds for educators and
underprivileged children. Lin shared her
mother’s passion for the underdog, being
a former educator herself, working as a
teacher in an alternative high school in Flint.
She was going to take her mother’s dream
and make it real.
And she did. Rita Langworthy had faith and
her daughter, Hope.
Not being one to indulge in feeling helpless,
having her hands tied and wallowing in it, Lin
got to work. Putting the foundation together,
materializing her mother’s dream became
a 24/7 priority. She spent days and nights
filling out paperwork, submitting documents,
assembling a board, and writing. Everything
fell into place. There wasn’t a struggle, and
while it can take years to get a nonprofit
made legitimate and have the IRS sign off, it
was done within a month. Lin, used to bumps
in the road working with nonprofits before,
couldn’t believe it. It was meant to be.
When asked how she did it, how she
maintained composure, and didn’t fall into the
depths of depression, she told said it wasn’t
easy. There were definitely bad days, horrible
days. Days that she stayed in, cancelled
seeing friends, and just sat with her feelings.
She dealt with it, which Lin claims is the
key to getting one’s self through something
completely horrible.
“You have to let yourself feel,” Lin said. She
explained that too many times, people feel
like they have to put on the fake smile, say
they’re fine, and push away feeling awful.
“Doing that only prolongs the grief,” she
explained. The best advice she got was from
a friend who told her that she could deal
with it now or deal with it later, and dealing
with it later would only make it worse. So
Lin confronted it, letting herself go through
the process. Her advice on getting through
tragedy? Learn how to feel, let yourself feel,
be honest with yourself that it sucks, and
even though life sucks at that time, be able to
find happiness. She mentioned that doing the
fake, “I’m okay” only made it worse and when
people asked her about it, she would be
honest. She’d tell them she felt like shit, that
the situation sucked, and she was getting
through it. She found the empty, “I’m sorry”
to be worse than no response and just kept a
distance from the pity party. Lin found when
people were straight with her on the severity
of the situation, it made it easier to deal.
Between facing the situation head on, letting
herself feel the emotions, and putting her all
into the creation of the foundation, Lin pulled
through. She explained that she could move
forward and live or stay stuck and let her soul
and spirit die. She chose to move forward,
not letting herself get bogged down by guilt
that she was doing so. “Something that
many of us do is feeling like we are doing
the deceased a disservice by moving on, like
we’ve forgotten them, but really it’s anything
but. Those we’ve lost would want us to move
forward,” she explains. Lin said this was
especially true with her mother. “My mother
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